Apple accidentally reveals iCloud.com banner notifications

A test of a new banner notification feature at Apple's official iCloud website was mistakenly made public on Tuesday, revealing a forthcoming feature for the service.

Users who visited the iCloud.com website could find an iOS-style notification at the top of their browser. It featured placeholder text for both a title and a message.

"Default Title for English," the title read, followed by "English - This is test message description."

To the right of the notification was an 'X,' allowing users to close the message from their browser. The test message could not be selected and it did not link anywhere.

The early reveal shows that Apple is planning to bring banner alerts to iCloud.com, a feature that first debuted last year on the iPhone and iPad with the release of iOS 5. The banner alerts replaced the previous, more intrusive alert notifications that must be responded to in order to return the device to normal use.

Regular alerts and banner alerts both remain as selectable options by users in iOS 5, as part of Apple's new Notification Center. Notification Center will also be coming to the Mac this summer with the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

In Mountain Lion, Notification Center will be accessible by choosing a circle button on the top right of the screen. With a gesture of two fingers sliding from the edge, the Notification Center can be pulled from the right of the screen.

That's slightly different from iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, where the Notification Center is pulled down from the top of the screen with a simple finger swipe.

Tuesday's reveal at iCloud.com did not give any indication that a unified Notification Center will be coming to the website. But it did indicate that Apple is actively working on bringing banner-style notification alerts to the free cloud-based service.

this really isn't much of a reveal given that they already told us about Notification Center for Mountain Lion. It seems a logical step that they would be syncing notifications via iCloud so such banners would exist.

That it is so logical and they already clued us in would be why they weren't super duper careful to keep this a secret during testing.

In addition to this I'd love to see iCloud.com get an additional app for iMessage.. and that if you read a message there it'll clear the notifications on all other iOS/Mac devices that it has been delivered to.

If I migrate to iCloud Apple will probably change it again so I will still have my stuff spread across two Apple IDs which can't be merged, a .Mac address which is the official name of one of my IDs however the email for it is .me and every time I try to access it on the web it redirects me to the migrate to iCloud page and never allows me to see my mail. Apple is just botched this whole user account madness by combining all manner of services on their end into iTunes. What a mess.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me considering they are adding banner notifications to OS X as well. If I'm logged onto my computer and also using a web browser to access iCloud, I'm going to see double banners for every notification. If I also have my iPad and iPhone on the desk beside me, that will be kind of crazy (quad)duplication.

If I migrate to iCloud Apple will probably change it again so I will still have my stuff spread across two Apple IDs which can't be merged, a .Mac address which is the official name of one of my IDs however the email for it is .me and every time I try to access it on the web it redirects me to the migrate to iCloud page and never allows me to see my mail. Apple is just botched this whole user account madness by combining all manner of services on their end into iTunes. What a mess.

I've used, iTools, Dot Mac, MobileMe and iCloud and my Apple ID has never changed. It can get confusing for some because although an Apple ID is usually an email address, it doesn't have to be a primary address or even active. It's just a sign in name. You can attach any email you like to your Apple ID for receiving messages from Apple and such.

Accessing your email through the MobileMe website should still work through June 30, though you will see a notice from Apple alerting you that the service is ending soon and you should consider moving to iCloud. After you migrate your MobileMe account to iCloud, you can no longer access your email from the MobileMe website and instead need to visit the iCloud website.

All this is especially straight forward with a single user. Things only get difficult when someone has set up multiple Apple IDs (either their own or family members) and want to merge them.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me considering they are adding banner notifications to OS X as well. If I'm logged onto my computer and also using a web browser to access iCloud, I'm going to see double banners for every notification. If I also have my iPad and iPhone on the desk beside me, that will be kind of crazy (quad)duplication.

I don't quite get it either. Maybe it's there for users who access their iCloud info from a computer that's not theirs? Who knows what the notifications on iCloud will be though. I'm hoping it makes more sense to me when Apple officially unvails it.